4 ms·

I don't think that is really accurate; nothing processes transactions like an IBM mainframe. To draw a crude automotive analogy, no matter how much you soup up

by gnu8 5y ago

I don't think that is really accurate; nothing processes transactions like an IBM mainframe. To draw a crude automotive analogy, no matter how much you soup up a truck, it is never going to be a locomotive. It is simply a different scale of machine.

astrange 5y ago
Are there actual objective benchmarks for things like this? Everything you actually see out of IBM is so bad (blockchain 5G AI cloud nonsense) and Moore's law exists, so it's hard to believe this stuff is that good as opposed to just having a really good moat. I am surprised how many government/bank systems run on 50s-70s code; it makes you wonder if we kept in practice writing those kinds of things since then.
- bawolff 5y ago
  IBM is a shell of what it used to be. I don't know if what the grandparent is saying is true, honestly i highly doubt it, but its unfair to compare old ibm with its current incantation of marketing fluff and bad high priced consultants.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  > Are there actual objective benchmarks for things like this? Probably not, but they are machines designed for throughput, with a multitude of intelligent peripherals that pipe data in and out of the CPU, which will be running at close to 100% speed all the time. The CPUs themselves are quite impressive (they present at Hot Chips regularly) and each cluster of 4 sockets share almost a gigabyte of L4 cache. Everything is also constantly checked, audited, logged for security and reliability. I wouldn’t be surprised if these machines thoroughly smoked a rack of souped up x86s at a similar budget in transaction processing applications.
908B64B197 5y ago
Problem is, it's a machine that's from one and one vendor only. You can buy a truck anywhere and run it on almost any road. The locomotive has to be from the one locomotive company and good luck running it outside of (really expensive) tracks.

by gnu8 5y ago

astrange 5y ago

Are there actual objective benchmarks for things like this? Everything you actually see out of IBM is so bad (blockchain 5G AI cloud nonsense) and Moore's law exists, so it's hard to believe this stuff is that good as opposed to just having a really good moat. I am surprised how many government/bank systems run on 50s-70s code; it makes you wonder if we kept in practice writing those kinds of things since then.

bawolff 5y ago
IBM is a shell of what it used to be. I don't know if what the grandparent is saying is true, honestly i highly doubt it, but its unfair to compare old ibm with its current incantation of marketing fluff and bad high priced consultants.
rbanffy 5y ago
> Are there actual objective benchmarks for things like this? Probably not, but they are machines designed for throughput, with a multitude of intelligent peripherals that pipe data in and out of the CPU, which will be running at close to 100% speed all the time. The CPUs themselves are quite impressive (they present at Hot Chips regularly) and each cluster of 4 sockets share almost a gigabyte of L4 cache. Everything is also constantly checked, audited, logged for security and reliability. I wouldn’t be surprised if these machines thoroughly smoked a rack of souped up x86s at a similar budget in transaction processing applications.

908B64B197 5y ago

Problem is, it's a machine that's from one and one vendor only. You can buy a truck anywhere and run it on almost any road. The locomotive has to be from the one locomotive company and good luck running it outside of (really expensive) tracks.